Not Chiba, Busan: Minami Pitched for the Other Lotte

The Lotte Giants put the announcement out on their official social accounts in late July: on 31 July 2026, at their home game against the Samsung Lions at Sajik Stadium in Busan, the special first-pitch guest would be Minami of RESCENE. Sports Kyunghyang put the joke in the headline — “지바 아니고 부산 맞습니다”, not Chiba, Busan, that’s right. Minami is Japanese, from Chiba, and Chiba has a baseball club with the same five letters on the front of the shirt. The paper printed what supporters wrote underneath the announcement, including one that has aged into the story’s punchline: “지바 롯데인 줄 알고 온 거 아니죠?” — you didn’t come thinking this was Chiba Lotte, did you?

The booking, in plain terms

The club’s announcement, quoted by Sports World, read: “31일 부산 사직야구장에서 열리는 2026 신한 SOL KBO리그 삼성 라이온즈와 홈경기 스페셜 시구자로 리센느 미나미가 함께한다” — RESCENE’s Minami will join as special first-pitch guest for the 2026 Shinhan SOL KBO League home game against the Samsung Lions at Sajik Baseball Stadium in Busan on the 31st.

The details as reported:

• Date: 31 July 2026
• Venue: Sajik Stadium, Busan — the Lotte Giants’ home ground
• Fixture: Lotte Giants vs Samsung Lions, 2026 Shinhan SOL KBO League
• Role: 스페셜 시구자, special ceremonial first-pitch guest

eToday confirmed the same fixture and the same role in its own report on 24 July 2026.

What a 시구 actually is

For readers who have never watched a Korean baseball broadcast: a 시구 (sigu) is the ceremonial first pitch. Before the real game starts, an invited guest — a singer, an actor, an athlete from another sport, a local figure — walks to the mound, throws one ball to a catcher, waves and leaves. Nothing about it counts. Its sibling is the 시타 (sita), the ceremonial first swing, where the guest stands in the batter’s box instead.

In the KBO League, Korea’s top professional baseball competition, the slot is a standard piece of matchday programming and a standing point of contact between the league and the music industry. Clubs announce their guest in advance, the broadcast carries the throw and the league’s own channels usually post the clip afterwards. That is why a single pitch can travel far beyond the stadium that hosted it.

Two clubs, one name

The fans’ joke works because the name is genuinely doubled. There is a Lotte in Korean baseball — the Giants, based in Busan, playing at Sajik. There is a Lotte in Japanese baseball too, in Chiba, and that is the one a supporter reached for in the comment Sports Kyunghyang printed. Same word, different league, different country.

Minami is from Chiba. She was booked by the Busan club. The gap between those two sentences is the entire story, and the paper let the readers close it themselves — alongside two more comments it reproduced: “롯데 야호”, roughly Lotte, yay, and “미나미 왜 우리 팀 아니야?”, why isn’t Minami on our team?

The humour here belongs to the fans and to the newspaper that noticed it. Nobody involved appears to have been confused about which mound was which.

The fourth member, not the fourth pitch

Sports Kyunghyang wrote it as a milestone: “이로써 미나미는 팀 내에서 네 번째로 프로야구 시구·시타 행사에 참여하는 멤버가 됐다” — with this, Minami became the fourth member of the group to take part in a professional baseball first-pitch or ceremonial-bat event. Sports World counted it the same way and listed the three who came before her: Woni at a Samsung Lions game in 2024, Liv at a Kiwoom Heroes game in 2025 and May at a KT Wiz game in 2025.

One clarification worth making, because the arithmetic can look off at a glance: that number counts members, not appearances. Liv and May have each stood on a KBO field more than once — see the Suwon story — and the count published in July was still four, because it was tracking how many of the five had done it at all. Minami was the fourth name on that list, not the fourth pitch thrown.

eToday summarised the pattern in a line: “멤버들이 잇달아 프로야구 시구·시타에 나서는 등 활발한 행보를 이어가고 있다” — the members have been going out one after another to professional baseball first pitches and ceremonial bats.

31 July, at Sajik

Money Today photographed the throw and captioned it as a pitch wishing Lotte a win, then published a second set of pictures from earlier the same day showing her practising it.

The pitch also went out through official channels. The KBO’s own YouTube channel posted a clip of two minutes thirty-four seconds on 31 July 2026, titled “[삼성 vs 롯데] 리센느(RESCENE) 미나미의 팬들의 심장에 LOVE ATTACK💘하는 시구 모먼트🙌”. When the YouTube Data API was read on 27 August 2026, it stood at 521,662 views and 11,804 likes.

The host club went longer. Giants TV, the Lotte Giants’ own channel, published a fifteen-minute behind-the-scenes piece on 14 August 2026 under the title “미나미의 첫 시구 도전!” — Minami’s first first-pitch challenge. On the same reading it had 164,216 views and 5,570 likes. Two weeks after the game, the day was still producing footage.

Who Minami is

Minami is the Japanese member of RESCENE, a five-member group, and the only foreign member of the line-up. She told News1 in April 2026 that she came to Korea in 2021, at 14; she debuted with the group on 26 March 2024, at 19.

Her home region is the one piece of the group’s map that its Korean civic work does not reach. When the Korea Economic Daily covered the group’s Goyang ambassadorship in July 2026, it noted that the members hold four Korean city ambassadorships between them and that Minami’s home region, Chiba, is not among them.

Three weeks later, the member whose hometown sits outside the group’s Korean map stood on the mound in Busan, wearing the name her hometown club also carries.

Key takeaways

• The Lotte Giants announced Minami as special ceremonial first-pitch guest for their 31 July 2026 home game against the Samsung Lions at Sajik Stadium in Busan.
• Sports Kyunghyang built its coverage around the Chiba–Busan overlap and printed the fan comments, including “지바 롯데인 줄 알고 온 거 아니죠?”
• Sports Kyunghyang and Sports World both counted her as the fourth RESCENE member to take part in a KBO first pitch or ceremonial bat, after Woni (2024), Liv (2025) and May (2025).
• That figure counts members, not appearances — some members have appeared more than once.
• The KBO’s official YouTube channel posted the pitch on the day; the Lotte Giants’ Giants TV followed with a 15-minute behind-the-scenes piece on 14 August 2026.